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On common fucking decency

Coquette, I agree with your views on organized religion. My question is, how can we separate our disapproval of the belief system from racism and discrimination against its believers?

It’s as easy as separating the ideas from the people. There’s a huge difference between saying “Fuck Islam” and “Fuck Muslims.”

I’ve had friends who are Egyptian, Turkish, Palestinian, Saudi, and Iranian. Some are royalty, and some are refugees. Some are devout Muslims, and some are proud to be apostates. They all have completely different backgrounds from wildly varying cultures, and all of them to some degree have experienced racism and discrimination here in America. That has nothing to do with Islam. It’s because they’re brown and have accents and America is full of bigoted assholes.

Racism and discrimination are products of in-group favoritism and othering. They’re what happens when willfully ignorant people come at the world with an “us vs them” mentality. That mindset is poisonous, especially when it’s accompanied with an attitude of “superior vs inferior.” Toss irrational fear into the mix and bad shit starts happening.

You can disagree with a person’s belief system all day long. Sometimes it’s even appropriate to call them out on their nonsense, but the second you start treating them as an “other” — as someone apart and less than you — then you’ve crossed the fucking line.

You don’t have to respect everyone’s beliefs, but you do have to respect everyone’s humanity. You have to be fucking decent.

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13 thoughts on “On common fucking decency”

Annasays:

I know of many more muslim refugees that were refused entry into national territory, than Saudi royalty (and other dictators) who detain money in my country that was plundered from their country. While I agree in coquette’s general idea of incorporating religious discrimination into a more general concept of racism, I don’t like the consequences of this particular argument. Racism, religious or otherwise, is based on the need to produce an ideology that justifies socioeconomic differences and international globalization (as opposed to internationalism).

My comment on the previous post supported the view that seeing religion as a concept distinct from political religious identity is a flawed way of thinking.
However, ignoring the relationship between a group of believers and their religious and/or political elite is also dangerous. It masks the mechanical cycle of domination and feedback, which is detrimental to the community (but not the leaders) and is one that can lead us to the madness seen in Paris.

I think it’s only when who see the underlying economical and ensuing social tensions, that one can begin to imagine a common solution for both racism and the consequences of religious political identity.

You’re absolutely right, but in all fairness, your comment addresses international issues of racial injustice, whereas my post was only intended to address interpersonal issues of racial discrimination.

I actually meant to address both national and international racism. I only took the international example as a counter example to your statement about royalty and refugees, the argument is maintained at a local level.
I don’t know how you address interpersonal racism, without addressing the constant flux of immigration from poor to rich countries, and the socioeconomic imbalance that is a cause and a consequence of that (ie : international racism).
Of course, since the US has a history of treating its ex-slaves so bad for so long, I can understand that for practical issues, race and class can be assimilated (well at least the Black Panthers did a good job of reuniting the two).
But really, I can’t fight the growing racism I see around me by just dismissing the people that inflict it as “bigots”, just as I can’t dismiss the rising proportion of vote for the far-right semi-fascist Front National amongst poorer populations as the vote of idiots (especially since they are digging up the populist aspects of a left wing rhetoric that has unfortunately been abandoned by every other party for 20 years at least).
We all have a deterministic experience linked to what we were born as. We also have a zone of liberty in that deterministic experience.
If your fighting for equality, you must acknowledge both these aspects about humans beings, bc the zone of liberty is the part you can directly influence.
PS: The fundamental opposition between leading classes and communities is particularly important to me, as a militant who spends part of her time getting jewish youth and muslim youth (as well as christian, atheist, and other youth) around a table to discuss why Palestinians should have their state recognized (==>to ensure the end of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and general peace in the region, also this is one of our many political campaigns). When you tell them that neither the Israeli or the Palestinian people want to see their youth massacred, and expose the political manipulations of the far-right fascist israeli groups and the far-right islamic palestinian ones, they can imagine solutions that don’t involve one cultural group gaining domination over another. (Ages going from 15 to 25 but I assure you it’s the 15-16 yo than surprise me every time with their clarity of vision.)

Actually the problem is to identity what she means by “Persians”. It’s all the more fun since ” Persian” isn’t a racial declination we are used to in the West. It makes examining racial definitions all the more complicated and all the more fun (fun as is dismantling the idea of strict cultural or racial separations).

I’ve never met a Persian who would describe themselves as white, or be happy with being described as white. My friend is actually half white English, half Iranian and is referred to by other “full” Iranians as “mixed” and “half whitey” even though they all born and brought up in the UK. So that’s my 2c.

“It’s as easy as separating the ideas from the people. ” This is exactly what I got out of yesterday’s post and ensuing discussion. I’ve absolutely been one of those leftie scums who’s said “but Islam isn’t inherently bad, it’s warped by certain individuals for complex geopolitical reasons.” All the while ignoring the fact that such a statement assumes Islam is inherently good. As though the “true” way to practice a religion is the way that makes us feel the most warm and fuzzy. As though I haven’t been a recovering Catholic since age fourteen, who has no problem criticizing the shit out of Christianity.

It’s exactly like Coke says. This is tangential from the race issue, but I might completely disagree with, be baffled by, and even repulsed by my mom’s beliefs. I might passionately disagree with her views on gay marriage and abortion, but that doesn’t mean she’s not a human being deserving of respect. Fuck white America’s Christian fragility and bigotry all day long, but I can still treat my Christian friends and family with respect, and the same goes for muslims and jews.

The problem is saying things like “Fuck Islam” makes it a lot easier to “otherize” Muslims. Bigots who threaten Muslims and actually perpetuate violence against them won’t see or acknowledge the subtleties of separating the idea from the people.

Maybe a religion is more than its beliefs and scripture, though? Maybe a region is as much its practise, history, art and community? I think your argument that “Fuck Islam” and “Fuck Muslims” is a distinction without a difference, because Muslims are going to attach a lot of their culture and heritage to Islam. And certainly those who are going to commit violence against Muslims are going to collapse the two.

I am skeptical because part of the nature of colonialism was the naturalization of Eurocentric conflicts in the past as the progression of any civilization. In particular, a common discourse in Western civilization is that critical thought, reason, and science are opposed to religion (or more precisely, spirituality).
This is because the Catholic Church supressed free thought in Europe. It was only till the Enlightenment, which required an elimination of the Church’s hegemony, did Europe reintroduce itself to free thought and science. Hence, many new atheists use this Eurocentric intuition about the function of religion in civilizations to interpret the Middle East as backwards for its profileration of Islam. Of course this idea that free thought and science are opposed to religion/spirituality is false when analyzing other civilizations. For example, the Islamic civilizations that thrived during Europe’s dark ages, invented algebra and algorithms and made significant translations and contributions to Greek and Vedic philosophy. (A sad irony that such inventions are utilized now to send drones over the very same regions the inventions orginated from). This all occurred in civilizations whose states where Islamic and implemented sharia law. In fact, if one looks with closer scrutiny Islam permits free thought and discovery much more than Christianity with its faith-based tenets. For these reasons, I can comfortably say that ‘Fuck Islam’ is very different than ‘Fuck Christianity’ (especially from the mouths of the privileged in a Western empire). I think we must be careful to universalize Western intuitions about religion, which are really about Christianity, to interpret events in other civilizations. After all, this universalizing of Western intuitions is one of the ways in which colonial rule perpetuates itself.

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